Love's Usuries Part 22

"'Yes,' she replied, very simply, 'she neither loved nor starved.'

"For a long time the poor girl remained mute, staring at the ill-fated blue garment, and one of white cambric that hung the last on the hooks.

I rose to put my arm round her, to break the skein of unpleasant a.s.sociations, but she moved away, and said in a hard, almost defiant, voice:--

"'There is one more; tell me its tale if you can, and if not----'

"She paused while I took the fine lace and lawn into my fingers; it seemed a summer dress, scarcely crushed; in front, however, and on the sleeve was a splash of dull red-brown.

"'Paint?' I suggested, 'or blood. An accident, perhaps?' and in questioning I met her eyes.

"'Don't, don't!' I cried, 'don't speak!' I flung myself back in the chair, and covered my face to avoid the sight of hers--the expression of horror that was staring from it.

"'I will, I must speak. Yes, blood; his blood. Oh!' she exclaimed, standing in front of me in that Ca.s.sandra-like att.i.tude I had noticed before, 'I can see it now. George had gone to the country--so he had said--and I, to pa.s.s the time, dined with an uncle at Bignards. You know the room--the thousand lights and loaded tables, the c.h.i.n.k of gla.s.s and glow of silver--the gay and brilliant company that is always there? We dined, and were leaving afterwards for the Opera. My uncle pa.s.sed out first, and I was about to follow him, when, at a little table _a deux_, I saw George and her; George looking down, down into her eyes and her bosom, with a hot red flush in his cheeks, and a lifted wine-gla.s.s in his hand. I don't know what happened; I burst between them, flung the gla.s.s from his fingers, and then----'

"I thought she must scream, but only a gasp escaped her. She looked at something on the ground and added in an awed, strangely intense voice, 'He was dead!'

"The tone compelled me to her side; a torrent of agony seemed frozen at her lips.

"'Hus.h.!.+ Hus.h.!.+' I implored. 'Your brain was deranged: you had been ill----'

"I had recovered. Did you never read of the Reymond affair? I am that miserable woman. Lucky, some people have called me, because in France they are human and cla.s.s such deeds as _crimes pa.s.sionels_.'

"My words I cannot remember. They were violent reiterations of love, a.s.surances that I had read and recalled the catastrophe--the fatal result of a gla.s.s splint probing an artery--and had pitied her before I knew her. I protested, raved, threatened, vowed I had come with the one object of linking my life to hers, and that now, more than ever, my mind was fixed.

"But she remained cold, almost severe. 'You remember,' she said, 'how I fled from you to spare myself a Tantalus torture--a hungering for spiritual peace, a thirsting for rare devotion which you seemed to be offering with laden hands?'

"'Your longings must have been slight!' I scoffed, ungenerously.

"'Listen,' she cried, still standing rigid, though the thrilling tone of her voice confessed her emotion. 'The verdict of acquittal was merely a doom to perpetual remorse. "A life for a life," was cried to me from even the day-break cheeping of the birds. I thought to make atonement by fasting and prayer: I hoped for it in attending the stricken--walking hand-in-hand with disease. On stormy nights I fancied I might save some drowning soul from wreck; earn an innocent life at the cost of my own; I was ready--craving of G.o.d the hour and the opportunity, but it never came. I have knelt and starved, I have nursed the sick to health, I have rescued a child from the depths, and yet I live!'

"I clutched her gown, kissed it, abjured her to leave her theories of atonement with Heaven, and trust her future and its serenity to me. But she put me aside.

"'Oh, Aubrey, be merciful--spare me all you can, for I am like a pilgrim who faints in sight of the Great Road. I know now that it is not the pulse of life, but the colour and the scent of it that make one's sacrifice. I believe that every guilty soul must have his moment of high opportunity--of expiation, and this is mine. You are brave, you are great, you are generous. Shall you tempt me--and stay; or will you save me--and go?'"

Poor Yeldham's voice broke to a hoa.r.s.e whisper, and I laid a sympathetic hand upon his knee.

"And you, Aubrey, you went?"

"I am here," he answered, with a groan that was more pitiful than tears.

For Love or Science?

"This morn a throstle piped to me, ''Tis time that mates were wooed and won-- The daffodils are on the lea.'"

There is always a store of benevolence and magnanimity in the heart that beats at an alt.i.tude of nearly four feet from the ground. Wit, wisdom, and energy may go pit-a-pat "at the double" on lower levels, but great souledness and probity only come to their perfection in a steadier region.

Beyond these last-quoted virtues Ralph Danby had few. He was rather lethargic and decidedly clumsy. His six-feet-three of flesh and blood was knotty with muscle, but, in the garments of the polite, the muscularity showed like adipose tissue and spoilt him. In feature he was p.r.o.nounced perfect.

"Perfect as regenerate man can well be," raved a lady artist, who, before he had been in Hampstead a week, had implored him to pose for a painting of early Scandinavian cla.s.sicism. He wore a Vand.y.k.e beard--not because he liked it, but to avoid the casualties of his native clumsiness, which made shaving as farcical as Heidelberg duelling--and permitted its amber waves to roam caressingly close to his chin with a negligence that was the more graceful because unstudied.

At first, when it became known that young Dr Danby intended stepping into his father's practice, Hampstead resented it. Cabinet Councils of "tabbies," a.s.sembling over their postprandial Bohea, declared they would none of him. A retired Army doctor, forsooth! What would become of their nervous ailments, their specially feminine disorders? If they had the finger-ache, he would be bound to suggest amputation; if liver or neuralgia, he would insist on active employment--those were the only formulae known to regimental sawbones, poor benighted things!

But when he came, when it saw the benign blue eyes and lordly physique of the new pract.i.tioner, the feline chorus changed its note, while neuralgia, _migraine_, and other indefinite and not unbecoming disorders became quite epidemical in his neighbourhood. Only a few daring persons ventured to harbour opinions in opposition to the _vox populi_, and those speedily argued themselves ignorant or prejudiced, or both.

There existed perhaps but one person of his acquaintance who was absolutely indifferent to the impression created in his new surroundings--the one and only person for whose goodwill Ralph Danby had ever cared. He had known her at Gibraltar, a laughing, rosy bride, brought out by the senior Major, a man almost double her years. But that seemed ages ago. The Major had been gathered to his fathers, and Mrs Cameron, with her baby girl, to the great regret of the regiment, had returned to the vicinity, if not to the care, of her parents in Maida Vale.

It was this departure, though it would have surprised him had he been told so, that inspired Ralph Danby with the notion that Army doctoring was a bore. He came to the conclusion that real work was all he wanted.

What a field was open in metropolitan life with its suffering and pain for a man's labours--a man who was otherwise good for nothing! And then the reward--the smiles of the relieved--that existed always, when other satisfaction failed.

He realised he was down on his luck, but diagnosed no further, and sent in his papers. Farewell dinners followed, and the mess tried to carry him round the table at the risk of collective apoplexy (for he was a huge favourite in every sense of the word), then the _Peninsula_ weighed anchor, and Gibraltar saw him no more.

It was some time, however, after taking over his new work that he ventured to call on Mrs Cameron. He respected her widowhood; he feared the renewal of his acquaintance might revive unhappy recollections; but he went at last.

He was pathetically nervous when introduced into the tiny drawing-room where Phoebe sat alone. But the moment he heard her rippling laughter he was rea.s.sured. The room was small, and Ralph was big and clumsy. In his advance one of those Algerian tables, so admirably constructed to bark the s.h.i.+ns or bang the knees of unsuspecting mortals, gave way before him and scattered its _bric-a-brac_ far and wide. This trifling incident served to put him on his old footing at once, and in fact to establish his ident.i.ty, for Danby's reputation for wreckage had been universal as well as costly.

"At it again, you see, Mrs Cameron!" exclaimed he, as he hastened to right the impediment. "Allow me. I am so sorry. Allow me!" he gasped, while grovelling with her on the floor in search of some errant trinket which had rolled into s.p.a.ce. She "laughed a merry laugh and said a sweet say" of forgiveness, while he noted a transient blush on her downy cheek. He was not a vain man, but he harboured a tiny wonder whether it had been born at sight of him or of the mere exertion of stooping.

"I have a practice quite near here," he volunteered aloud. "It was the stooping," decided the inward mentor regretfully.

"How curious!"

He did not think it so, but agreed.

"It _is_ strange. My father is old, and he was quite pleased to retire when he found me fit for the berth. I thought life at Gib awfully monotonous, and was glad enough to throw it up."

He had not complained before Phoebe Cameron left, but the question of his sentiments did not come under discussion. They talked of old friends a little sc.r.a.ppily and with some constraint--so much had happened since they had met, and numerous recollections had to be skipped--until his hostess asked:--

"Would you like to see my wee Phoebe? She is growing wonderfully. She is nearly two years old now!"

Her voice sank with an inflexion of sorrow. The age of her child recalled the long blank which occupied the centre of her lifetime's sheet.

The big man's heart thrilled with pity. He longed to open his wide, protecting arms and fold the fragile creature to his breast; she seemed so sweet, so brave, yet so lonely.

But he answered bluntly enough:--

"Produce the youngster. I suppose she'll call me 'Dot Dandy' as the other kids used to!"

Phoebe was absent for a few moments, and then returned with a toddling article, half embroidery, half flesh, with cheeks like apples, and eyes wide with youthful criticism.

"This is Doctor Danby," introduced her parent, lifting the child and placing her on the guest's capacious knee, though still supporting the tiny waist with an a.s.suring hand.

He and the juvenile scanned each other carefully. The grey eyes, the bronze curls, and rosy mouth--they were the exact presentments of her mother. He stooped and kissed them one by one.

Before an outsider he would have been for ever compromised, but fond mammas can see nothing extraordinary in any affectionate demonstration towards their offspring!